Abstract
Many linguists refuse to believe that poetic − and especially metrical − texts can provide reliable evidence of linguistic phenomena. In this article, I show that the Medieval Greek πολιτικὸς στίχος poetry represents an exception. By means of a case-study I demonstrate that the metre of the πολιτικὸς στίχος does not constitute a straitjacket for the language, but actually presents a flexible system: a comparison of the distribution of the object clitic pronouns (OCP) in the two parallel manuscripts in which the 14th century Chronicle of Morea has been preserved not only confirms the established rules for OCP distribution but also reveals that the πολιτικὸς στίχος allows many rephrasing possibilities on all levels of grammar (phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax).
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